Continuing to survive primarily on federal handouts and subsidies, the wind energy movement has recently come under fire. While it is typically seen as a “clean” and “eco-friendly” alternative to fossil fuels, as the bird carcasses accumulate, the movement is starting to see closer scrutiny. According to Robert Bryce of the Wall Street Journal:

Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.

But the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines. A violation of either law can result in a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for two years…

Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.

…Bats are getting whacked, too. The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that wind turbines killed more than 10,000 bats in the state in 2010.

ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court…to the deaths of 85 birds [not eagles] at its operations in several states, according to the Department of Justice. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and Exxon agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees. In July, the PacifiCorp utility of Oregon had to pay $10.5 million in fines, restitution and improvements to their equipment after 232 eagles were killed by running into power lines in Wyoming, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

That is far fewer than the estimated 10,000 birds (nearly all protected by the migratory bird law) that are being killed every year at Altamont…

Despite the deleterious effect that the windmills are having on wildlife, the wind industry is pushing to keep both its carte blanche and generous subsidies. According to Eric Glitzenstein, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer who wrote a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “It‘s absolutely clear that there’s been a mandate from the top” not to prosecute the wind industry for violating wildlife laws. “To me,” he said, “that’s appalling public policy.”

In 2011, wind energy was the second-largest recipient of the government’s $24 billion in energy subsidies. According CNN Money, proponents say that, “while renewable technologies may be more expensive now, federal support provides a crucial market and…given time and economies of scale, renewable technologies will eventually be able to compete with fossil fuel.”

Could this station be the one the Obama family fills up the old war wagon? I rather doubt it, but it is only about a mile from the White House.

That’s bad, but sadly it is not worst in the nation. Although I can’t find a photo, I have confirmed prices in Los Angeles. At some stations the prices start at $5.99 for regular, $6.09 for mid-grade and $6.19 for premium. Holy Crap!

So at what point will the economy just come to a screeching halt? If this keeps up, I’d say very soon.

Here’s an idea. Maybe we can petition Nancy Pelosi to allow us to use our food stamps to purchase gas?

If you have been paying attention you would realize this is exactly what this Administration desired. This is the Green Utopian model playing out. Strangle the oil, gas & coal industries & force people into their sunshine and lollipop alternative energies.

Here’s just one example of Chu’s great ideas for saving us all from ourselves!

In 2008, Steven Chu was quite clear what he wanted for this country. As of February, 28, just 2 weeks ago, his view hadn’t changed.

But just Tuesday, at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Mike Lee (R-Ut.) asked Secretary Chu: “So are you saying you no longer share the view that we need to figure out how to boost gasoline prices in America?” Chu responded: “I no longer share that view.”

Share that view with whom? It was his view. My guess is between his testimony in Feb. and now, he was taken to the woodshed and told he had better shut up about his and the administration’s true intentions.

I’m also sure that he was told that after the election, there will be no restraints and they can go full speed ahead with their plans to forcibly change our behavior.

If Obama wins a second term, the new slogan will be “Yes We Can, Walk to Work”.

The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs in February vs. expectations for 206,000, continuing a recent trend of decent hiring activity. The unemployment rate held at 8.3%.

But America remains mired in the longest jobs recession since the Great Depression. It’s been 49 months since the U.S. hit peak employment in January 2008. And with nonfarm payrolls still 5.33 million below their old high, the jobs slump will continue for several more years.

The previous jobs recession record — 47 months — came during and after the comparatively mild 2001 recession, which saw unemployment climb to only 6.3%. The average job recovery time since 1980 is 29 months, not including the current slump.

The labor market won’t truly return to health until some 10 million positions are created to rehire all those who lost their jobs and to absorb new workers.

The longest jobs recession in decades coincides, not coincidentally, with the longest stretch of anemic economic performance on record.

U.S. gross domestic profit hasn’t risen 4% or more in any quarter since the first quarter of 2006. That’s by far the longest such stretch on record going back to 1950. The only other sizable sub-par stretch was a three-year span from late 2000 to mid-2003 during the prior recession and sluggish recovery.

The current expansion, which began in mid-2009, is particularly disappointing, given the deep recession that preceded it. The best growth was a three-quarter run of 3.8%-3.9% gains.

After the severe 1981-82 recession, the U.S. economy enjoyed a five-quarter stretch of 7% or more — following a 5.1% annualized gain.

The U.S. economy is up just 6.2% above the level at the end of the recession vs. 14.9% in the 10 quarters after the 1981-82 slump.

President Obama may take hope that the U.S. economy has picked up from near-stall speed to a modest pace in recent months. But after the mild 1990-1991 downturn, the U.S. economy rose tepidly for a few quarters before growing more than 4% in every quarter of 1992. That still wasn’t enough to keep the first President Bush from losing to Bill Clinton.

Dinesh D’Sousa will release his movie 2016 which demonstrates life in America under a second Obama presidency. If we think the Obama administration has been destructive, wait until he has no further worries about running for another term. Obama’s game plan can be taken directly from one of the books he allegedly wrote, “Dreams From My Father.

As will be pointed out in the video below, the words “From My Father” instead of using “Of My Father,” unlocks the thought process’ for this very complex individual. His father was an anti-colonialist and a Marxist. Obama certainly seems to be following “his fathers dreams.”

Saying he’d look for a “strong and principled conservative” as a running mate should he win the Republican presidential nomination, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum tells Newsmax that he certainly would consider rival Newt Gingrich for that vital role.

When asked if he would consider the former House Speaker as number two on his ticket, Santorum said Gingrich had been “tested” by the bruising GOP race and that makes him an attractive vice presidential candidate.

Santorum tells Newsmax that his choice would be a core conservative who is “willing to stand up and fight for the things that I believe in.”

“My principal and only criterion for vice president is to make sure that I have someone that I have confidence that if something should happen to me that they could carry on and do what I promised the people of America I would try to do,” he said.

Gingrich would seem to fit the bill more than any of the other candidates. He and Santorum have been battling for the same voters on the right of the party as they try to defeat front-runner Mitt Romney.

Santorum said the GOP only has to look to history to see that conservative candidates do better in general elections that do moderates.

“If we have another moderate Republican we are going to end up with the same situation we had four years ago,” he said, referring to John McCain’s loss to Barack Obama. “We’ll have the same situation we had with Bob Dole and the same situation we had with Gerry Ford.

“You go back. If we nominate conservatives we win. If we nominate moderates we lose. We can’t afford to lose this one.”

Santorum said he is not worried that the latest Rasmussen Reports poll gives Mitt Romney a double-digit lead over him, going into Saturday’s caucuses in Kansas and next week’s primaries in Alabama and Mississippi.

“Three weeks ago I had a double-digit lead and before that he had a double-digit lead and before that Newt Gingrich had a double-digit lead,” he pointed out. “This is an ebb-and-flow campaign.”

He said that Romney has spent some $65 million so far and has had a super PAC spend almost as much, while he only put some $6 million into his campaign.

“The fact that he hasn’t been able to close the deal and get this nomination behind him, that we are very much alive and well and have an opportunity to win this race, is a testament that money does not buy this election.

“Ideas and vision will not just win the primary but more importantly it’s the only chance we have to win the general election,” Santorum added.

The GOP has to nominate “someone who has convictions, someone who tells the truth to the American public, someone who goes out there and lives what he says he is going to do and follows through and has the courage of his convictions and can create a clear contrast with President Obama,” he said.

“I do that. Gov. Romney, in all fairness, is simply not measuring up. The people of America are beginning to see that and that is why we have the opportunity we do.”

Santorum said he is “very hopeful” that he will win Kansas and that he will at least beat Gingrich in the two Deep South states, proving he is the conservative alternative to Romney.

Santorum said Obama’s energy policies are one of the main issues that are preventing the nation getting below 8 percent unemployment. “It can be summed up in two letters,” he said. “N-O.

“We have literally 60 billion barrels of gas and oil off the coasts of this country and this administration is saying, ‘No, we are not going to go there.’ Shutting down federal lands for good, not voting the Keystone pipeline, not opening up Alaska – all of that is driving up energy prices, which is slowing down this economy and crushing it with a high-energy cost burden.”

The former senator from Pennsylvania said he would repeal costly regulations on businesses and simplify the tax system, and that too would add jobs.

“I would cut the corporate rate of tax to zero and say to every manufacturer not just in this country but around the world, bring your business here; expand your business because we want to make things here in America again.”

He also made it clear that he is vehemently opposed to forcing religious institutions to have health insurance plans that cover contraception.

“It’s bad enough to impose a new rule making everybody buy insurance but the idea that they are going to force people to buy insurance on products that they have moral objections to is truly government run amok,” he explained.

And Santorum said that if there is enough GOP support in November to elect him, then the party can get at least 50 seats in the Senate.

“We’ll have the wherewithal to be able to strip all the funding and fines and fees out of Obamacare and make it basically a dead letter,” he vowed.

by Tom Tancredo:(Tom Tancredo is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Foundation and founder and co-chairman of Team America PAC. He is also a former five-term congressman and presidential candidate. Tancredo is the author of “In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.)

Almost every week brings a new reason for the United States House of Representatives to bring impeachment charges against President Obama. The question of the day is not why he should be impeached but why it hasn’t already been done.

This week it was Secretary of Defense Panetta’s declaration before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he and President Obama look not to the Congress for authorization to bomb Syria but to NATO and the United Nations. This led to Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., introducing an official resolution calling for impeachment should Obama take offensive action based on Panetta’s policy statement, because it would violate the Constitution

Well, really, folks: Is Obama’s disregard of the Constitution really news? No. He has done it so many times it doesn’t make news anymore. Democrats approve it and Republicans in Congress appear to accept it – not all Republicans, of course, but far too many.

The list of Obama’s constitutional violations is growing by the day and ought to be the topic of not only nightly news commentary but citizens’ town-hall meetings and protest rallies.

President Obama can only be emboldened by the lack of impeachment proceedings. His violations typically arouse a short-lived tempest among some conservatives, yet impeachment is not generally advocated by his critics as a realistic recourse. That must change.

That Obama can be voted out of office in eight months is not a reason to hold back on impeachment. Formal impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives would help alert the nation’s 120 million likely voters that more is at stake in Obama’s power grabs than Syrian human rights and contraception subsidies for college students.

The grounds for House impeachment proceedings have been laid by Obama’s own actions. A list of his unconstitutional and illegal actions would embarrass any honest public official and makes Nixon’s Watergate cover-up look like a college fraternity house panty raid.

Obama’s policy on the use of military force abroad raises grave issues – both policy issues and constitutional issues. When Defense Secretary Panetta tells a Senate committee he will rely on NATO and the U.N. for “permission” for use of military force, that is an affront to and direct assault on the Constitution.

Those Panetta statements propelled Rep. Jones to introduce a House resolution stipulating that any use of military force by the president without an act of Congress, except to repel a direct attack on the United States, is an impeachable offense under the Constitution.

But this is only the latest Obama assault on the Constitution. There are many other examples of Obama’s disregard for constitutional limitations to his power.

•Obama violated the Constitution with his “recess appointments” while the Senate was not in recess. It is up the Senate to decide when it is in recess, not the president. That distinction between executive and legislative authority is what the Separation of Powers doctrine is all about.

•Obama is an obvious participant and co-conspirator in Eric Holder’s approval and later cover-up of the illegal “Fast and Furious” gun-walking program. Unlike the Watergate case, people have actually died as a result of this illegal program.

•Obama undoubtedly has knowledge of and has approved Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano’s project to require Border Patrol management to falsify apprehension numbers on the southwest border. This is a clear violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, which requires the federal government to protect the country against foreign invasion.

•The president’s open refusal to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act is a violation of Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution, which does not authorize the president to choose which laws to “faithfully execute.” The oath taken by a new president on Inauguration Day does not say, “… to defend the Constitution of the United States… to the best of my ability except when I disagree with it.”

•Did the president violate the law when he instructed Labor Secretary Solis to negotiate agreements with foreign governments to expand the “labor rights” of illegal aliens?

The precedent of Clinton’s impeachment over his perjury in the Monica Lewinsky case established the principle that the legal definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is what Congress wants them to mean. Have Obama’s actions met the constitutional standard for impeachment? Absolutely, yes.

Unless the House of Representatives acts to begin impeachment proceedings against this bold usurper, we are headed for dictatorship. Either the Constitution limits the president’s powers or it does not. If it does, Obama must be impeached for his actions. If not, then a dictatorship is not only inevitable, it will be upon us soon.

At a time when many liberals are doing their best to remove all guns from the hands of Americans, I was shocked to see two different court cases that upheld concealed carry permits.

In Colorado, the University of Colorado had banned all weapons from the campus. Three students who belonged to Students for Concealed Carry on Campus filed a suit against the university claiming that the university’s ban violated the Concealed Carry Act and provisions in the Colorado Constitution.

A District Court judge dismissed the student’s case. The dismissal was based upon the understanding that the Board of Regents is a statewide authority with its own legislative powers over distinct geographical areas made up of the state’s university system.

The student’s appealed their case to the Colorado Court of Appeals who overturned the District Court’s dismissal. This court ruled that the Concealed Carry Act applied statewide which would include university campuses.

The university and Board of Regents appealed the Court of Appeals ruling and the case then went before the Colorado State Supreme Court. Just a few days ago, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals ruling. This gives anyone who holds a proper conceal carry permit that right to carry a firearm on the university campus which is a huge victory for pro-gun rights in Colorado.

The second case involved a suit filed by Raymond Woollard who had applied for a conceal carry permit in Maryland and was denied because he couldn’t provide a good and substantial reason to be allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Woollard’s suit claimed that the superintendent of the state police and Handgun Permit Review Board were violating the Second Amendment right to bear arms when they forced permit applicants to bear the burden of proof for the need to carry a concealed weapon.

In 2002, a thief that had broken into his home accosted Woollard. When his concealed carry permit came up for renewal, he listed the incident as the reason to carry a concealed weapon. The review board denied his renewal application because he did not prove to them that he was subject to any threat outside the home.

The suit went before Maryland’s US District Court where Judge Benson Everette ruled that the state of Maryland’s attempt to restrict gun ownership was unconstitutional and violated the Second Amendment. In his ruling, Everette wrote,

“A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”
At a time it seems that gun ownership is coming under more attacks than ever before, there still seems to be hope for law abiding gun owners.

I’m sure if either of these cases had gone before the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeal that the outcomes would have been different. I applaud these judges for ruling on the Constitution and law and not on the popular liberal agenda as so many other judges have been doing.

The following video is yet more stunning evidence of the current administrations total disregard for the Constitution.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has come out and said that the military will seek international permission before, or even if, they consult Congress.

While responding to Senator Sessions at an Armed Services Committee meeting, Panetta said that “our goal would be to seek international permission” and “whether or not we would want to get permission from the congress – I think those are issues we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.”

So basically, they are saying they have no intention of following the Constitution and seeking Congress’s approval before taking military action?! But they will ask NATO or the troglodytes at the U.N.